Folklorist in a can?

I was surfing the Web the other day and ran across a couple university pages in which Folklore is the focus of masters degrees. I have to say, it felt a bit strange to see such a thing. Even as one who holds two masters degrees, I feel as if the art of the folklorist/storyteller is something that universities really can’t grant a person. Sure, they might be able to show students the ins and outs of the art… the different genres, etc… and they may challenge students to create their own forms of art, but I see it as a skill not learned in the classroom.

Perhaps my perception of this is limited to the way in which I came to know and appreciate folklore, as something delivered in rural settings. From my youth, I recall a variety of stories being told, but never from a person who had been granted a degree in folklore. It had been learned… passed along to them by others from previous generations. Some had mastered the art of the storyteller quite well, and could put a listener… especially children… on the edge of their seats. I know of one person in particular… a grand uncle… who was a fantastic spinner.

Stories are stories… some tell them better than others. The storytellers have certain pitches in their voices, expressions, gestures, etc., etc., but… not all have a certain magic that make the stories.

I’ve never heard a degreed “folklorist” and a non-degreed, rural folklorist tell the same story and leave it to the listeners to describe the differences, but I suspect one thing in particular makes the value of the listeners’ experience much more valuable. It’s in something that follows the stories… a simple question. When a listener, especially a youth, asks… “where did you hear that story?”, and the storyteller says… “from my uncle”… “from my mother/father”, “from my grandmother/grandfather”, “from my great grandmother/grandfather”, and so on… therein is the magic. If one would respond… “from a book” or “from a class”, I think it would be akin to a balloon being popped with a sharp pin. Even if the magic had made an appearance in the telling the story, the magic would suddenly… be gone.

I’m not quite sure. I can understand the interests in finding out “how things tick”, and one can act as a truly magnificent storyteller, but I wonder if there should be a distinction between storyteller and folklorist.

I believe that Folklore Studies as an academic discipline began in the 1960s, with its antecedents going back to the work of such people as Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and others for the Library of Congress. Folklore in the academy was part of the trend toward social history with its “bottom up” approach to scholarship. There was increased interest in anthropology and other social sciences at the same time as well.

So much of who I am and who my children have become is the direct result of the stories that my grandfathers, grandmothers, father and mother shared with me as I was growing up. Stories from Missouri, Kansas, the Indian Territory and Texas. Flatlanders and hill folks, farmers and ranchers, outlaws and local law, religion and politics. The Civil War, before, during and after. That heritage and especially the way it was told to me has shaped me and my families life and love of history, the leaders, the spokesmen and the common man that endured and relished in life, as only this country can provide.